BSG: The Ship is a Cylon

Moore’s a magician. Always trying, as he says, to “hide the cards.” He spent episode after episode telling you to try and find the Final Five. Then just the Fifth. Now there’s supposed to be a new Cylon called Daniel?

By keeping you focused on the identity of the Final Cylon the writers are able to keep you from even thinking about the real revelation that they are hiding from you: All the humans are Cylons.

A primary theme underlying BSG is what does it mean to be human. We definitely saw this in the exchanges between Cavil and Ellen. Humans will discover they are Cylons. Philosophical questions of what it means to be a human will consume and divide the fleet. The Significant Seven will find themselves becoming more and more individualistic. There will be fissures among “humans” and Cylons alike. Some will desire to retain the knowledge that they are machines. Some will desire to play a role in the “rebirth of humanity,” believing that a Cylon can only be human if it doesn’t know its a Cylon.

Let’s Not Forget the Ship

Let’s look at the hybrid quote again:

And then, they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.

Who has the wings of an angel? Why, the Battlestar Galactica of course. Now that the Chief is going to start making modifications to the ship by adding a Cylon bio-mechanical liquid that will fuse with it?

Uh, Houston, we’ve got ourselves a sentient Battlestar.

The Rebirth Cycle

In the BSG world, “humanity” seems to be reborn on something like a 4,000 year cycle.

Pythia writes of “the exile and rebirth of the human race” 1,600 years before the exodus of the tribes from Kobol. The Great Exodus of the Twelve Tribes from Kobol took place some 2,000 years prior to the events of the Miniseries. Thus, we are essentially looking at a 4,000 year rebirth cycle. A timeline that would look something like this:

Mankind originated on Earth. (As the Fleet approaches Earth, the artifacts they encounter become more ancient. The ruins on Kobol are 2,000 years old, the Lion’s Head nebula beacon is 3,000 years old, and the Temple of Five is dated to 4,000 years.)

Earth creates Cylons. Cylons rebel, evolve and are defeated by Earth’s humans. Or Cylons defeat the humans but then some want to be human. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that some segment of Cylons, knowing they are machines, will set out to give rebirth humanity.

On Kobol, Cylons procreate “humans” that are unaware of their true nature as Cylons. These unaware humans live with the Cylons, who are known as the Lords of Kobol. The people of Kobol lived in divine utopia with their Cylon gods. In time, the Cylon nature of their origins is erased from human history.

I’m not going to make a guess as to whether this is the second or the five hundredth “rebirth” of humanity. I don’t think it matters. There ceased a long time ago to be any “real” humans.